


without mercy

by simplycarryon



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Gen, Spoilers, massive spoilers for the no mercy route
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-26
Updated: 2015-09-26
Packaged: 2018-04-23 09:39:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4871962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplycarryon/pseuds/simplycarryon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It all comes down to this moment, and <em>he is in your way.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	without mercy

**Author's Note:**

> general warning for violence, blood, and an unhealthy amount of determination. I'm a little new to the AO3 system, please bear with me as I figure out what actually needs tagging.
> 
> originally titled "sans mercy" because language is funny that way.

You want him angry.

Oh, he’s angry now, but it’s a tired rage—smoldering ash instead of a white-hot fire—and it’s always more fun to taunt him until he’s blisteringly mad at you, until he starts bending the world and the rules, and the universe itself snaps you from point to treacherous point.

There’s no real fury in his movements, now, even as he crushes you to the floor with the weight of his own soul; you force yourself up and into a leap, evade a flurry of razor-sharp bone shards, roll out of the way of a series of magical barrages, and come up swinging.

He sidesteps, of course, but your knife slices through the sleeve of his jacket this time, and even if his skeletal grin never leaves his face you swear you can feel him squirm.

“Why wouldn’t the skeleton just die?” you ask, skipping lightly over his next attacks. Frisk tries to compare it to jump rope, somewhere deep down inside you, but you shatter their tiny soul back into silence. “Because he didn’t have the guts.”

“That supposed to be funny, kid?”

“I thought you liked bad jokes.”

“There's a time and a place.”

“Seems like the right time and place to me,” you say, flipping the knife in your hand once before going at him from a different angle. “You’re not taking this seriously. Why should I?” He moves faster than he always seems like he should, blurring away from your knife just in time to save his nonexistent skin.

“What makes you think I’m not takin’ this seriously?” he asks, and his expression doesn’t change—does it ever, really, now that you think about it?—but something in his voice does, and the next round of bone fragments flies at your face instead of your legs and it takes all of your concentration to slide under them.

Good.

Getting closer, now.

He’s angry, but you want him beyond furious. You want him violent, uncompromising, willing to reduce you to ash and ruin. You want him blinded by his own judgmental ire, exhausted and just a fraction of a second too slow.

“You seem a little tired,” you finally reply, your tone mocking. You’re good at mocking. It comes naturally, despite the whole innocent-child façade, and it feels good to let that fall.

“I _am_ a little tired.”

“Take a nap!” you suggest, taking a running leap at him, your dagger glittering in a sharpened arc.

“Burn in hell,” he offers instead. His hand flicks out of his pocket, and too late you feel the force of his soul again, flinging you out of your trajectory and into the ceiling, then the floor. Something breaks. Just a rib, you hope, spitting a mouthful of blood on the marble tile and stumbling upwards again. This isn’t your body anyways; it’s not like you need it to last much longer.

“Why didn’t the skeleton want to fight?” The effort of the question drags a cough out of you, and hey, you were right about the rib thing; at least one of those is broken, but whatever—you don’t need all of them. You wipe your mouth with the back of your hand and wait for him to respond, but he doesn’t give you that courtesy, just waits empty-eyed and grinning for your answer. “He just didn’t have the heart for it any more.”

“You should consider a career in comedy ‘stead of murder,” he says, lining a pulse of devastating light up with your head. You duck, which hurts, and wonder if he’s pushing you into doing things that are going to get more painful as time and injuries wear on. Of course he is. “Might end better for both of us.”

“For you, maybe,” you spit. You fumble for the packet of instant noodles you shoved in your pocket earlier. It’s dry, but it’s not like you have the time to sit and wait for four minutes, so you bite into the crunchy block of noodles and force a mouthful down. “We both know how this works out for _me_ in the end.”

The noodles barely have time to take effect before he whips his hand around, slamming you bodily into a nearby pillar, then down again into the floor. Spears of gleaming bone erupt from the tiled hallway beneath you, lancing through your chest and limbs; you choke through the pain and will yourself upright on shaking legs that shouldn’t be moving at all.

“Hurts, don’t it?” he asks, one eye glinting an eerie gold in his skull. “And it only gets worse from here. Give up now, save yourself the trouble.”

“Hey Sans,” you wheeze, the words bubbling in your throat. This body should be at its limit, but you force it further, determination burning hot in your chest even as you bleed your last few HP away. “Why did the skeleton cry?”

He doesn’t answer. His eye flickers between gold and bright, bright blue.

_"Because his brother turned to dust."_

He slams you into the wall, then the ceiling, then the floor, over and over and over again. Your bones shatter under the repeated impact, your blood turns the stained-glass windows and the marble hall into a macabre sunset. Your entire body screams, but you refuse to scream with it. You won’t give him that satisfaction. You just wait.

You wait, because he slows, his vicious fury ebbing in the face of fatigue. He can only keep up the fight for so long; you’ve timed it before. Eight minutes reduces him to an empty shell, his soul too exhausted to maintain such a demanding pace.

“Ya dead yet, kid?” he asks, hands returning to his pockets. “I could use a break.”

You don’t move. You’re not breathing, you realize after a moment. Your heart has stopped in your chest; your lungs refuse to inflate. Frisk fights you for control, their soul searing your incorporeal hands, but you stamp them down again, put a knife through their spirit and wrest control of what remains of their body from them one last time. They would just let you both die, anyway, and then you’d have to suffer through this hell all over again.

The effort takes you no more than a minute or two, but by the time you’re in full control again…

He’s asleep.

_Idiot._

You fight to get up on your hands and knees, a little surprised you have any blood left to bleed. From there it’s another struggle to get to your feet, but your determination keeps you upright and conscious through the pain. You shouldn’t be alive, let alone walking. But you walk. And your fist tightens around your knife, though the torn muscle and shattered bone in your hands should not allow it.

You drag yourself to where he stands, and you swing at him with the intent to cleave his soul from his skeletal corpse.

And he steps to the side.

“Didja think I’d actually—“

You lunge, then, moving out of turn, and cut him from shoulder to hip.

For one long, long moment, he just looks stunned, like he’s surprised you would break the rules at this point.

“Well,” he says finally, swaying in place. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you. I’m outta here… s’time for my union-regulated break. Supposed to meet someone at Grillby’s.”

He staggers slowly out of the corridor, trailing white dust as he moves, and the marble hallway carries the echo of his last words back to you.

“Papyrus, you want anything?”

You grin, a horrible approximation of mirth, and turn back towards the throne room as he dissolves into powder. Those last few EXP pour a little strength back into your ruined body.

Just a few steps left until the end.


End file.
